Customer Success Story: Lansdowne Resort

The whole Passkey experience helps to enrich lives. Our team is less focused on all the manual work and it's easy for them, and all the additional customization and capabilities add to our guest's stay helps us deliver the good life to them. "Riza Mina Group Rooms Coordinator

83%

increase in upsell revenue

79%

increase in revenue from add-ons

81%

increase in events using campaigns

Delivering the Good Life

At Lansdowne, they believe in delivering the good life. The resort team encourages guests to pause while they're there to connect with each other, connect with nature, and connect with the local lands. With hundreds of acres for guests to explore, along with over 50 local wineries and breweries, Lansdowne is an ideal place for guests to do that, and a great place for meetings and group events ranging from corporate retreats to weddings.

Getting Days Back

The team kept running into roadblocks, though, due to inefficiencies in their old system. They weren't able to customize new room-block links for groups, with only one booking template available. The Lansdowne team likes to create a high-touch experience that makes their guests feel special, and not being able to create or send customized links to groups was impeding on their ability to do that.

But it was more than not having the ability to create custom links - their old system was creating bottlenecks that could waste days of work.

The process of getting any group in the system was incredibly slow. When Riza Mina, the Group Rooms Coordinator, was spending time on putting a group in the system, she couldn't do any of the work for other planners.

"There are four planners and ten sales teams, so if she was stuck doing one thing, then everyone else was paralyzed. Basically, [Riza] never had much time to do
anything except for putting in a running room list manually," says Hilary Lawhon, the Regional Reservations Manager. If there was a hotel buyout, it would take
an entire day just to load in all the information.

Automation, Customization, and More

Ultimately, it was that desire to save time and money, partnered with their need for customization, that made the Lansdowne team try out Passkey. And they haven't been disappointed with their choice.

Instead of using the old day-long process, Riza can now use the Room List Manager feature to upload an Excel spreadsheet and then move on to the next group in a matter of minutes. This not only frees up her time, but also frees up the entire sales team to be more effective. It also reduces errors and typos, and ensures PCI compliance.
It also impresses the guests: "Being able to send the group a rooming list, complete with confirmation numbers, about ten minutes after they first sent it to us - they're like, 'wow, that was quick!' And that's probably never happened to them before."

Their customization struggles are gone, as well. They can now create customized URLs and websites to be branded per property or branded for an individual event, or even for a specific audience within the event. "We had a group that didn't want the word 'resort' to show up on any of their paperwork, and obviously, we're called Lansdowne Resort," says Riza. In the past, that would have been difficult to do, but with Passkey they could customize the link and remove that word from all communication and emails. "That's why we got their business - because we were able to do that for them."

Best of all, implementation was easy - their technician helped them get set up and trained in the system quickly. The team's other favorite Passkey features include being able to change logos for groups and add pictures to booking pages, updating rates and sub-blocks, and the automated emails and dashboard that groups get. That last one comes in handy with weddings, especially - clients used to email every day asking for a rooming list, but now they can check on their own.

Moving Forward

Over the next five years, they want to expand their resort offerings and continue to build programming that will attract leisure and group guests. "We want to have unique events happen at the resort on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, continuing to utilize our land and take advantage of it to give resort guests more to do when they come to Lansdowne," says Riza. And, of course, continue to improve the resort and cultivate their land.

Now, with their time freed up, they can be more productive for the company. While the guest list is being uploaded, Riza can move on to her next task, without worrying about how long the process will take. But the biggest impact has been the ability to do the upsells for groups and offer the suites. "It gives us more revenue, and we weren't able to do that before with our system."

With this additional revenue and more time to be productive, the Lansdowne team is well on their way to living the good life - and helping their guests do that, too.